


The Family Business

by DizzyDrea



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), RED (2010)
Genre: Crossover, Family, Gen, Mothers & Sons, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 15:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2115675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzyDrea/pseuds/DizzyDrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye nodded, a speculative look on her face. "So, this is like the family business for you, isn't it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Family Business

**Author's Note:**

> This idea just grabbed me the other day and wouldn't let me go until I'd written it. It's totally my headcanon now. The working title for this was "Dangerous Runs in the Family", which is accurate, if not just a little on the nose. I was supposed to write and post this last week, for my birthday, but real life intruded and I just didn't get done. So, you still get the story, just a week late. Enjoy!

~o~

The Bus sliced through the late-day sky with the ease of a bird of prey, her hulking black fuselage a stark counterpoint to the reds and oranges of the setting sun. Phil Coulson had ordered best speed back to The Playground; they weren't really in a hurry, but after two weeks hopscotching across the globe looking for friends they could trust, he was eager to get home.

He was in the operations center, going over the new intel they'd uncovered when Melinda May's voice crackled over the internal comms. "You have an incoming call."

Phil cocked his head. May sounded irritated, which meant it was probably someone who shouldn't know how to reach him. That was a shorter list than it had been months ago, but still worrisome. Technically, SHIELD was still a terrorist organization, so anyone calling could be trying to triangulate them in order to bring them in.

"Can you get a read on the signal?"

"No," came the clipped reply. "It's been scrambled six ways to Sunday."

"So are we," Phil pointed out. "Put it through."

He could hear the displeasure in Melinda's silence, but he hadn't been kidding. Skye had upgraded the comms on the Bus; if anyone thought they could track the plane by calling in, they'd find that next to impossible. It wasn't foolproof, but Phil trusted his people. If Skye told him the plane was nearly untraceable, he had to believe it.

The monitor in front of him flickered briefly, and then a woman's face appeared, familiar blond hair and blue eyes peering back at him and looking larger than life on the big screen. The woman's brows—elegantly plucked as always—were wrinkled in a frown that cleared the instant the connection solidified.

"Philip," she said. "Oh thank god! I worried when you didn't call."

Phil blushed. "Mom, you do realize I had no idea how to contact you."

"Pfft," his mother said, waving a hand as if to dismiss that small detail. "You could have reached out. There are people who know how to reach me."

"I don’t know if you've heard, Mom, but I'm kind of a fugitive at the moment," he said. 

"Yes, I'd heard," she said on a sigh. "It's like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Utterly asinine, is what it is."

And leave it to Victoria Winslow to distill the last few months of his life into one simple sentence. She'd always had a knack for seeing the issue for what it was. It was what made her such a good operative, and it was a skill she'd lovingly passed on to her son, along with hand-to-hand combat and the ability to blend in no matter where he was.

"I've missed you," Phil said, deflecting the conversation. They didn't need to go into how ridiculous his situation was; he knew only too well. "How've you been? Are you still active?"

"I'm well, dear," she said. "Doing my utmost for Queen and country, you know."

"You should be back at the house in Virginia, Mom, not gallivanting around the globe taking on the bad guys. It's called retirement for a reason."

"I was bloody bored with retirement, and you well know it," Victoria said, lips pursing into a frown. "I'm just not cut out for it. Not even when your father talked about moving to the Greek Isles and collecting seashells. It sounds lovely, but I'd be bored within a week and itching to shoot someone."

Phil chuckled. His mother was many things, but capable of idling away her golden years was definitely not one of them. "And how is Ivan these days?"

"He's lovely, as always." Her soft smile made him glad she'd been able to reconnect with her one-time lover after his father had died. He hated to think of his mother alone, no matter what she was doing with her life these days. "He sends his best. Said to say that if ever the Director of SHIELD needed a favor from an old Russian dog, he needs only to ask."

"I'm glad to hear it. We have precious few friends as it is. Nice to know we have one more."

"Is it really as bad as all that?"

"Probably worse," Phil said, shrugging. "I don't know how much you've heard, but we've been blacklisted. Most of what's left of the agency is currently on this plane, and what friends we have are so far underground it'd take a whole team of archeologists weeks to find them."

"I think you'll find you have a great deal more friends than you realize," Victoria said. "What Pierce did was dreadful, but most of the community realizes that it wasn't everyone in SHIELD that was bad."

"There were enough that we're still sorting through who was and who wasn't Hydra," Phil said. "People I'd known for years—friends I'd trusted with my life—turned out to be enemies. I don’t know if I'll ever be able to trust anyone that way again."

"You trust your team, don't you?"

Phil winced. "That's just it: I had a Hydra mole on my team. He tried to kill two of my people and would have succeeded if not for—"

"Nicholas," Victoria said.

"How'd you know that?" Phil asked, eyes narrowed, though he probably didn't need to.

"The same way I knew you'd become the Director of the new and improved SHIELD," she said. "He paid me a visit a few days ago. That's how I knew how to reach you. He thought perhaps you could use a little cheering up."

"Yeah, right," Phil snorted. He still wasn't happy with Nick for hiding what he'd done to Phil, but you couldn't argue with Director Fury—or former Director Fury. He did what he needed to fit his agenda. "Did he tell you what he did? Why I survived New York?"

"He told me," Victoria said, nodding. "I'm glad he did what he did. You're my son and I don’t want to lose you, so to hell with the consequences. If it had been me, I'd have done the same damned thing."

Phil was honestly surprised by that, but he probably shouldn't have been. He could see the hardness in his mother's eyes. She'd had to give up a lot in her lifetime, make a lot of hard choices to do what she did. He'd always admired her for her ability to compartmentalize. But somehow, when it came to her only son, all that went out the window. It made him love her all the more.

"So, how much trouble are you going to be in for making this call?"

"Pfft," she said, waving that dismissive hand again. "They can bloody well kiss my arse. And I told the new M that, too."

"I'm sure he was pleased to hear one of his best operatives say that," Phil said, repressing the smile trying to break loose at the thought of his mother telling off the Minister.

"He's a good man," she said, cocking her head as her eyes took on that faraway gleam. "He was in the Army, stationed in Northern Ireland. Had a bit of a rough go, I'm given to understand. And of course, anyone who has to deal with this lot on a regular basis has the patience of a saint. But I simply will not stand for anyone telling me I can't even speak to my own son, a man whose loyalties have never been in question."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom," Phil said, smiling at last. "But I wouldn't want you to find yourself out in the cold because of me."

"I'd like to see them try," she said, that hard glint back in her eyes. "Besides, although that's the official party line, privately, there are more than a few who understand that the real bad guys are Hydra and not SHIELD. You may not be able to ask for help through official channels, but help will be there when you need it."

"Unofficially, of course."

"Of course," she said with a sly smile.

Phil took a deep breath. "Thanks, Mom. I'm sure I owe you a great deal for that."

"You owe me nothing, Philip," Victoria said. He could hear the affection in her voice, the catch that always betrayed just how important he was to her. "You're my son and you're a good man. That's all I've ever needed."

"Thanks," he said again, this time unable to quash the blush forming on his cheeks.

"Now, I must run off," she said, all business again.

"Places to go, people to shoot," Phil said.

"Very droll, Philip," she said, but she was smiling, so he counted it as a win. "Now, don't be such a stranger. You know how to reach me when you need to. I expect at least a text every now and again. You know, to let me know you're still alive."

Phil cringed. "Same goes for you. I worry about you, you know."

"I know, but I've friends who watch out for me now." 

"You tell Ivan that if anything happens to you, I'll personally see to it he takes up residence in the most remote gulag I can find," Phil said. It was an empty threat, and completely unnecessary, because Ivan took better care of his mother than any man alive. Still, he had to say it. His mother wasn't much for sentimentality, and neither was he, so he took his opportunities when they came.

"I love you, too, sweetie."

Phil smiled. "Love you, too, Mom."

The connection ended and the screen blanked back to the SHIELD logo. Phil thought for a brief second that maybe they should replace it with something else, something less controversial, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. Now was not the time to worry about that. If they could—if he could—rebuild SHIELD's reputation, it might not even be necessary, but still, it was a worry for another time.

"She seems nice."

Phil spun around, not even aware that someone had been behind him. Skye smiled, a little guiltily, at his stern look.

"Sorry," she said, holding her hands up, "just came up to see if I could help with the intel."

"Don't you have something else you should be working on?"

Skye wrinkled her brow at him. "Um, no?"

Phil gave a rueful smile. "Fair enough. Come on in; I hadn't gotten that far into it. You can help me sort out the potentially good leads from the utter bullshit."

"AC!" Skye exclaimed as she stepped up to the table.

"What can I say?" he said, shrugging. "I am my mother's son."

Skye narrowed her eyes, seeming to look right through him. "Yes, I can see that."

They worked in silence for a few minutes, before Skye spoke up again. "I meant it, you know. She seems nice. Kind of scary, but nice."

"My mother would probably cut your tongue out if she heard you call her nice, but yeah, she's an amazing woman." Phil smiled as memories of his childhood washed over him. "I never had what you'd call a 'normal' childhood. Everything I know about this business, I learned from her."

"Wait," Skye said, turning to lean her hip against the console, "I thought Raina said both your parents were dead."

"That's what's in the SHIELD files," Phil confirmed. When he saw that Skye wasn't going to just go back to the data, he flashed her a small smile. "My dad was an analyst for the CIA. He died about twenty years ago. Nick—Director Fury—or, well, former Director Fury, anyway—decided to enter my mom's death as well. That way no one could use them against me. Not that my mother would let that happen. As you can see, she's not exactly your typical suburban housewife."

Skye nodded, a speculative look on her face. "So, this is like the family business for you, isn't it."

"I suppose so," Phil said. He'd never really thought of it that way, but it was hard to deny when faced with the evidence. Even Nick had told him he was born for this, back when he'd first recruited Phil to SHIELD.

"Cool," was all Skye said, but the smile on her face shone with approval.

It wasn't like he needed it, but there were very few people he could call friends at this point, and it felt a lot like Skye had just become one of them.

He'd have to thank his mother later.

~Finis

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to anyone who can spot the reference to the third fandom in the story. I simply couldn't resist.


End file.
